Drew would have been allowed to opt out of the first-year event if it weren’t for Kit. But Kit was soooo excited and Aaron said he would go to prospective students’ day so that Drew had a parent who wasn’t leading the tour. That was nice of him and Kit wasn’t the kind of person who took ‘no’ for an answer, so Drew went on the tour and tried not to be bored. Although it was hard to be bored when Kit was literally quivering with excitement right next to you. And Dad was good at storytelling and public speaking, so he made the tour interesting even to Drew, who already knew everything Dad was going to talk about.

Marissa had promised to take him and Kit on another tour of the school later because Dad’s tour “left out all the fun stuff.” Drew already knew about a few of the secret passages—he’d been living at RMI for the last seven years because Dad was the school counselor and director—but Marissa had more experience. Drew usually wasn’t in the parts of the school that were far away from the staff apartments.

Eventually Dad and Aaron and Scott’s part of the tour split off from Kit and Drew’s part of the tour, and they were left with Professor Boot. Professor Boot was one of the professors who they couldn’t call by his first name, unlike Rob and Ivy and Kaz. Although it probably wouldn’t matter if they did, because Professor Boot didn’t seem to notice the staff kids too much. Drew thought it was weird that Professor Boot had been chosen to lead the student event today, but apparently everyone else who could have done it had been busy or something. Whatever. Professor Boot seemed like the kind of teacher where you could probably get away with anything because he didn’t care enough to stop you. There wasn’t anything worth getting away with right now, though, except maybe taking a lot of cookies and cheese, which Drew was going to do as soon as he could. He was hungry.

Drew was wearing grey cargo shorts, sneakers, and black socks. He hadn’t matched his socks to his black t-shirt (which had the logo of The Psychotic Tetrad, his favorite metal band, screen printed on the front in white) on purpose, but it was convenient that they matched. It was really just that the variety packs of socks sometimes came with different colors and today he’d picked black as the top ball of socks in his dresser this morning. Probably all the other students would have on white socks, like normal people, except for Kit, who was Kit.

Kit had already bounced over to the food table and then bounced over to a boy wearing white socks, who looked only mildly terrified of the redhead. Well, that wasn’t super surprising. Kit was even more extroverted than Drew was. He did a quick scan of people’s ankles on the way to the food, and stopped when he saw a boy holding up his pants leg to show dress shoes and black socks. He was dressed in a weirdly fancy way for the school tour, and he was also wearing a turban, and that was kind of unusual too. For an international school, RMI had a lot of white people.

Anyway, the other boy was standing by himself and wearing black socks, so Drew approached him. “Hey,” he said, giving a small wave as he walked over. “I’m Drew.” He decided not to include his last name, so he wouldn’t be the teacher’s kid for, like, five minutes. Not that he cared about people knowing he was two teachers’ kid, but he didn’t want it to be the first thing they knew about him. It helped that he didn’t look anything like his dad; Garen Tennant was tall and white and had straight brown hair, and Drew was eleven and half black with curly black hair. It’d be harder for his younger sister Madeleine to pass as not a staff kid, since she looked a lot like Dad and had the same eye color as Aaron and Jessie.

“We both have black socks. Do you wanna grab some food and find a table?” he added. It was kind of rhetorical, because Drew honestly didn’t know what he would do if the other kid said he didn’t want to do those things. Probably go get food anyway, and then save mildly-terrified-boy from Kit.

The tour left Satveer with butterflies in his stomach and a thousand questions waiting to be asked. Not least to clarify some of the already established mental depictions of the ghost’s gory death.... more

Anticipation quickly became releaf as Satveer scanned the room and realised the red headed girl hadn’t chosen him. Satveer was used to girls. His sister was a girl. Dilbaagh was not like that girl... more

The other boy apparently got his own name wrong on the first try, so that was… something. Sam, though. Drew had been expecting a less American name. Well, zero points for making assumptions, he... more

Satveer thought Drew seemed nice. Nice. Most people seem nice. Unless they were obviously not, in which case they were not nice. Was Satveer seen as Nice? Was Drew’s first impression of him, that he... more

Drew was surprised(ish) that Sam’s favorite place in the whole school so far was a classroom . Had he been paying attention when they toured the theater? Or the Quidditch Pitch? Or the Rec Center ?... more

Satveer ate his cookie as Drew talked about the Rec Centre. It was apparent that Drew was a little taken a back over Satveer’s declaration of love for the Practical Lab. As Drew tailed off and the... more

Ohhhh Merlin I really should have opted out of this tour. Dang it, Kit. Drew had really, really thought the conversation was going fine. Sam was a little odd but they were making normal small talk... more

Sam knew the hole he had dug for himself was as deep as it was wide. He was greatly relieved when Drew continued the conversation. Especially when he stated that Satveer would make friends within the ... more

‘I have a last name’ was not really the kind of fun fact Drew had been going for, but Sam wasn’t crying so he decided to let it slide. Drew was not much of a tea-drinker but, he thought, he’d be... more

As Satveer listened to Drews detailing his relationship with the red headed, he couldn’t help but smile. ‘She’s my best friend’ . How lovely, he thought. Drew’s father must be a loving man to have... more